The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. What is immortal about human beings?

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! While it must always be natural for the human soul and the human mind—and must surely be among their most intimate concerns—to raise the question that is the subject of today’s reflection, in our time, when so many, many people in the prime of life are called to pass through the gates of death, it must be all the more meaningful for the soul to direct its feelings and thoughts toward that which is immortal in the human being.

[ 2 ] However, in our time, a line of reasoning such as the one that follows is met with prejudice upon prejudice—above all, those prejudices that come from those who, standing on what they call the firm ground of a scientific worldview, believe they have no say on this matter, believing they must either regard it as transcending the limits of human knowledge or that anything said about it must clearly contradict the achievements of the scientific way of thinking. If, then, there were any statement to be made this evening, distinguished guests, that could not fully withstand the strictest scrutiny of the scientific worldview, I would prefer to leave that consideration unsaid.

[ 3 ] For what the natural sciences have to say about this question from their own perspective, must—from the standpoint of the spiritual-scientific worldview, from which we are speaking here—not only be anticipated in advance, but must also—insofar as it proves to be justified in our time according to the standpoint of current science—be recognized as entirely justified. But those who raise objections to arguments of the following kind from a seemingly scientific worldview always assume that, even in our time, one can still make do—in the face of advanced spiritual science—with the thoughts and ideas, with the insights, or better yet, with the habits of thought of a worldview that is drawing to a close. And it is still extraordinarily difficult for people today to understand that anyone who wishes to speak about such questions of spiritual worldview must appeal to insights of the human heart, the human soul, and the human spirit that go beyond what natural science is capable of providing—insights that, in a sense, tread the ground of an entirely different realm of knowledge, yet can stand fully alongside and above the findings of natural science as being just as scientific as those. The spiritual-scientific worldview seeks to allow what it has to say to flow into the spiritual development of humanity, just as what we today call the scientific worldview flowed into this development three to four centuries ago. And just as this scientific worldview at that time contradicted a wide range of habitual ways of thinking and prejudices and yet found its way to the human sense of truth, so will spiritual science take this path to the human sense of truth, even if today—quite understandably—it must still face objection after objection, and even if, as must be said today, such a thing is quite understandably regarded by many as daydreaming or fantasy.

[ 4 ] For whatever can provide an answer to the question, “What is immortal in the human being?” must first be drawn forth from the hidden depths of the human soul. A method of research is necessary that is based on intimate inner soul work, that lies deep within the human soul, that draws on nothing other than what is present in every human soul, but which, in the everyday life of that human soul, eludes its observation and attention. That which a human being carries through the gate of death—that which they carry up into a spiritual world where they find themselves after shedding the body—cannot be grasped by the forces of everyday life, nor by the powers of cognition one employs in everyday life for observing the world. A more intimate inner work of the soul is necessary for this. On repeated occasions, I have also had the opportunity to speak here in this city about this intimate inner path—the purely spiritual-soul path—that a person must traverse if they wish to enter the realm of spiritual beings and spiritual realities. From a particular perspective, let us once again shed light on this path of the soul toward the spiritual this evening.

[ 5 ] One cannot discern, from what a person presents in everyday life, what aspects of that person belong to the spiritual world. Just as one cannot discern this, one cannot tell by looking at water that it contains hydrogen—a substance entirely different from water itself. First, chemistry must come along and, through its laboratory methods, separate the hydrogen from the water; only then does one obtain something that can be extracted from the water and that exhibits properties entirely different from those of water. While water is liquid, hydrogen is gaseous; while water extinguishes fire, hydrogen burns. But no one who has only water before them can know what the properties, the peculiarities, and the essence of hydrogen are. First, chemistry must come along and separate the hydrogen from the water. Similarly, one cannot discern in the human being who stands before us in everyday life what lives within them for eternity, for immortality. The spiritual-scientific method must—one might say—act like a spiritual chemistry and separate from the body that which cannot appear in connection with it. And as fantastical and dreamlike—perhaps even as foolish—as it may still seem to some today, there will be a science of the future that will be clear about the fact that there are also spiritual-soul methods capable of extracting the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being—the immortal part of the human being—from its connection with the body, so that the human being can truly know: “I am now living with my soul outside my body; I experience myself in the soul outside the body!”

[ 6 ] And only through this inquiry, which leads to a realization whereby the soul experiences itself as separate from the body, can one enter the realm in which the soul possesses its immortal members. But it is not external methods, not tangible methods such as those used by the external natural sciences, that can serve to—if I may use such a crude expression—separate the soul, as it were, chemically from the mortal body; rather, it is intimate, spiritual methods—inner spiritual experiences. Of these spiritual methods, these inner spiritual experiences, we wish to present two in particular to our souls today.

[ 7 ] The first—as it is called—I would like to describe, using a technical term from the humanities: the concentration of mental life, emotional life, and the life of volitional impulses. When described this way, this concentration of mental life, emotional life, and the life of volitional impulses seems easy; yet one is tempted to say, in the words of Goethe’s *Faust*: “Yet what is easy is hard.” And what I have to describe concerns shattering experiences of the soul that have a profound inner impact—experiences of the soul that, in our understanding, confront us with a far greater inner tragedy, I would say, than we can ever face in the face of outward physical death. That is why those who have been close to spiritual science throughout the ages have always emphasized that the path into the spiritual worlds—the path to spiritual knowledge—leads to the threshold of death. It seems simple—but this simplicity must be approached with the utmost intensity and energy—what one must do to detach the soul from its experiences linked to the body. A thought, a feeling, or a series of thoughts, a series of feelings—one must first fully embrace them with the soul, make them fully present in the soul, and then place them at the center of consciousness, so that nothing else remains in this consciousness but these sensations and thoughts—which we have deliberately placed at the center of our consciousness through our soul—so that, as it were, the whole world around us is forgotten and submerged, along with all sensory impressions, all other sensations, and all other thoughts. And only that which we place at the center of our consciousness through our free will must merge completely—I would say completely—with the soul and its powers; the soul must feel itself to be entirely one with that which it thus brings to the center of consciousness.

[ 8 ] This is a task that takes a long, long time. Depending on how well a person is suited to it, it may take weeks, months, or even years. Again and again—even if they have only a few minutes to devote to it during the day—it takes them a long time to evoke within their soul that inner capacity which is capable of rejecting all other thoughts and sensations, all other feelings and desires, and of placing a specific kind of thought at the very center of their consciousness. It does not matter so much what the content of the thoughts is, but rather that, through our own free will, we place a manageable sensation or a manageable thought at the very center of our consciousness in such a way that we actually live entirely within what we are thinking or feeling—that we forget ourselves by knowing ourselves to be completely one with it. In this way, we all—every single one of us—concentrate all our soul’s powers solely on this one sensation, this one thought. First, however, one must be clear that, as I said, this seems easy; “yet what is easy is difficult.” Various factors come into play when one practices concentrating the mind. Above all, it is essential that we place at the center of our consciousness a thought that we can fully grasp. With most of the thoughts we have, all sorts of inner sympathies and antipathies, all sorts of feelings, and memories come into play. These color our thoughts, so that we usually have no idea what is actually at work in our soul when we have a thought in everyday life and concentrate on it.

[ 9 ] Anyone today who bases their views on psychiatry, psychology, or modern science naturally has a facile objection to all of this. They will say: If the spiritual researcher concentrates on a thought, they cannot possibly know what is surfacing from the subconscious depths of their soul within that thought, or how they then become immersed in autosuggestion and fantasies. Certainly, it is quite understandable that such objections are raised from a scientific point of view; and these objections appear, in a certain sense, to be fully justified, and the spiritual researcher can well understand why they must be raised. However, what must be taken into account in all these matters is usually overlooked. You will find the details carefully compiled in the two books: *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in my *The Secret Science*. People overlook precisely what is required there—that one should pay full attention to it. What matters is placing a thought or a feeling at the center of one’s entire soul life—one that is easy to grasp, that cannot remind us of anything, and that cannot evoke anything from the subconscious depths of the soul. Therefore, it is even better not to place at the center of one’s consciousness an image taken from any external reality—an image that depicts something—but rather an image that is purely symbolic, purely symbolic, where the only thing that matters is that we concentrate and focus our soul forces, that we devote all the work of our soul forces to withdrawing from everything else in order to concentrate purely on this one point.

[ 10 ] Let me give a fairly simple example of what happens when someone becomes deeply absorbed in an idea:

[ 11 ] “In the bright light, the clear truth of the world shines forth.” Or: “In the bright light, the clear truth of the world lives.” When one forms such a sentence, anyone who stands on the ground of external, sensory materialism can, of course, say: Yes, such a sentence is pure fantasy; it means nothing; it does not reflect reality. But that is not the point; rather, what matters is what one does when thinking about and feeling such a sentence—what the soul accomplishes. And then, whether one meditates at length on such a sentence or alternates it with others, one has a very significant inner experience—an experience of which the person who has gone through it knows full well that, in relation to the human soul, it represents something as real, as real as any chemical or physical method is in relation to external, sensory things. By concentrating on a specific content of consciousness, one comes to experience—one comes to feel ever more strongly those soul forces that can be called the imaginative and thinking soul forces. In a sense, by identifying with them, one feels oneself becoming stronger and stronger inwardly, and while outwardly one remains at rest with regard to the whole world—with one’s senses and the outer intellect—inwardly one feels oneself growing stronger. Deep within, one feels something welling up—something hidden in the soul, something one has not observed before, but of which one now becomes aware through immediate experience.

[ 12 ] And as one experiences this feeling becoming stronger and stronger, and the inner light becoming brighter and brighter, one reaches a certain point. We will see shortly that this point is not actually meant to be fully attained through a straightforward spiritual development—as I will describe shortly—but must be modified by something else. But if one were to concentrate more and more, directing everything within the soul more and more toward that one chosen object, then finally—having felt one’s inner activity and inner energy swell ever more strongly—one would come to feel this power as if it were subsiding, as if it were fading away. This is a significant experience one arrives at—an experience that, for the one who goes through it, represents an infinitely unforgettable inner experience. For in doing so, one has a very specific inner experience—the experience one feels: Now is the moment when, after concentrating all your soul’s powers—after gathering together everything that is otherwise hidden in the soul—you have allowed it to flow into your power of thought, into your power of imagination, and where it flows out of you—but into the world flows that which you have drawn up from the depths of your soul. It eludes you, it leaves your body, it flees from you!

[ 13 ] And one would not be able to keep up now; one would feel as if one’s soul had been torn from one’s body, and that this soul were united with the universal spirit that blows through the world and works within it. One would feel alienated from oneself. Therefore, the exercise implied here must be modified by another that must take place simultaneously with it. And anyone who follows the path of spiritual research as I have described it in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* will thereby receive the individual rules through which one truly modifies what I have just described, so that we do not feel, as it were, as though the best part of ourselves has been torn away. So something else must be added. The first thing, then, that separates the soul from the body was the concentration of thought, the intensification of the life of thought. Through this intensification of the life of thought, we are, as it were, torn away from ourselves. The second factor, as it were, contradicts this; it is something opposite, the other pole, but life proceeds in a polar manner—it proceeds by passing through opposites. Therefore, if one has insight—an insight that is not to be merely an insight into abstract concepts, but an insight into the laws of nature and of life—one must move through opposites.

[ 14 ] The second is what one might call a complete surrender of the will to the prevailing, essential, and active powers of the world. Just as, in the first stage, we bring our sensory cognition—the intellect, which otherwise operates under the guidance of external sensory perception—to a standstill, so too, in the second stage, we must bring every inner, self-willed desire to a standstill; in a sense, we must bring everything within us that is will to a standstill. Now there is a certain means by which one can develop the inner forces to truly and radically surrender one’s own will to the general weaving of the world: this is achieved by adopting an entirely new attitude toward what we call our fate. How do we experience this fate of ours in ordinary life? Well, we experience this fate of ours in such a way that we regard what befalls us as a stroke of fate—whether good or bad—simply as something that happens to us; we meet it with sympathy or antipathy, so that we truly view what is, so to speak, referred to as the “chances of fate”—what befalls us—as something approaching us; we stand outside of it; we see ourselves as the “I,” the self-essence, upon which fate acts, to which it approaches.

[ 15 ] Even in everyday life, one can see through truly rational reflection that, fundamentally speaking, we cannot really take that stance toward fate. If one considers what one is at a specific moment in a future experience, one will say to oneself: What one is there—what one experiences in one’s inner being, what one can and is capable of—is simply inconceivable without the ordinary course of life between birth and death. Just think about it carefully. Everything we are capable of in the present moment—when we trace it back to ordinary life between birth and death—we must admit: what we can do now is connected to something we went through in the past. The fact that I can do something now may be connected to the fact that the person responsible for my upbringing once introduced me to this or that sphere. What happened to me back then became part of me; it became a strength within me; now it is my ability. Whenever one truly reflects deeply: “What am I, really? What is it about me?”—one will see that what is within me or within other people at this very moment is present in every human being, woven together by destiny. And if one pursues this thought properly—one might say, in accordance with the soul—one comes to realize how, in a sense, one must grow ever more closely together with one’s destiny, how, in a sense, one must recognize what one calls one’s “I” as a fabric woven from destiny. What one otherwise refers to as a coincidence, one now finds processed within oneself, woven into oneself; one finds oneself to be the result of destiny. One grows together with it—with fate—and in this way, one grows together to the point of identifying with it.

[ 16 ] Just as one must say of the earlier path, the earlier method of spiritual research—that one identifies with a thought, with a feeling—so now one must recognize oneself as one with one’s destiny through the thing itself, through the circumstances themselves. What I am saying now, however, must not remain merely theoretical; it must not be merely an abstract consideration, but must be lived through completely with inner feeling; it must permeate every fiber of our soul. Then we feel how, little by little, we see our own will flowing out into our destiny, and we realize: You have regarded something as a twist of fate up to now, but it was you yourself. That which is within you is what brought this twist of fate to you; otherwise, you would not be this being, this “I.”

[ 17 ] Essentially, when one engages in such meditation on one’s destiny for weeks, months, or years—depending on one’s natural disposition—an emotional surrender to destiny emerges. One learns to recognize that one must step out of the little room in which one has felt confined until now. One learns to let oneself flow along with the current of one’s destiny. So when one recognizes how the self, the “I,” actually lives outside of oneself—how, in what we call “events,” our will in truth resides within—how the “I” flows along in fate—then this will, as we surrender ourselves to our fate, is in turn torn away from us. And that is the second point. But it must be attained—it must be attained through an inner experience of the mind and emotions. It must fill the whole person—that is, one must surrender emotionally to destiny. Then one feels how, through destiny, one simultaneously grows together with spiritually active world forces that govern and permeate the external world. What seems to slip away from us in concentration of thought—what seems to take away our sense of self—is then followed—that is, the thought is followed—by an element of will, an emotional element of will. As we feel the thought flowing out of our head in the manner indicated earlier, we then, from our whole being, follow it somewhat. We offer our will to the thought. And then, then the soul, the thought, the feeling, the sensation, and the will emerge alongside the thoughts, and we go with them.

[ 18 ] What I have described is a real process, a genuine emergence of the soul from the physical body. This is something that can be experienced just as truly, intensely, and realistically—one might even say experimentally—as the release of hydrogen from water, the separation of hydrogen from water. It is like the separation of the soul from the body, which is then left behind in such a way that the body, together with the entire external experience, becomes an external object; the soul has stepped out of the body. It then regards its body—which it has left behind—in the same way one otherwise regards a table or a chair in the sensory world.

[ 19 ] And what is important is that the soul does not experience itself merely in the abstract; rather, just as it develops an inner experience within the body, so too does it develop an inner experience outside the body—one that it knows to be a spiritual-soul experience. It is in this inner experience, rich in content, that the soul experiences itself. And truly, just as people long remained unaware that oxygen could be separated from hydrogen but had to learn it, so too will humanity’s spiritual culture learn that the spiritual-soul aspect must be separated from the physical—no matter how baroque, how foolish, how absurd this may still seem to present-day humanity.

[ 20 ] A true spiritual science is that which the future will bring—and through which the future of the human soul will provide the knowledge the human soul needs when the forces that have existed since time immemorial have matured within it to receive such things. We are awaiting such a time. Only those who fail to recognize the signs of the times can deny this—those who are unaware of the deepest longings that already live consciously in many souls today, and unconsciously in others, and that will eventually take hold of all humanity: the longing to know about the spiritual. But then, when the soul experiences itself in a truly bodyless state, it comes to know within itself forces that one does not possess in everyday life—forces that cannot be developed while in the body. One comes to know a force that can be described as follows:

[ 21 ] As we go about our daily lives, and as the soul develops the powers of imagination, feeling, and will—we arrive, in our everyday experience, at what is ultimately called memory. And anyone who reflects a little on memory knows what this memory means for the entire, cohesive being of the human person. We could not develop a sense of self if we did not recall, within that sense of self, the experiences we have gone through since a certain point in time after birth. Only because the stream of memories does not break off—because we know that it was we ourselves who lived through this stream—only through this are we an “I,” a self. Even worldviews can only work with memories that the soul stores within itself, and can then place these memories in a harmonious or logical context, so that we can perceive what the soul experiences in everyday life as its final experience—as a memory, as recollection. On what, then, is remembering—memory—based? Well, viewed from the outside, we can say that when we go through experiences, we form mental images; we feel this or that in response to the experiences. Then an image remains with us, which is stored in the soul, and even long after the experience has passed, we know how to look back upon that image in our inner experience; the experience itself is no longer there; only the inner image remains—something that our soul simply weaves. In order to approach this image—and the very essence of memory—we can now consider the following. I can only outline it in broad strokes, as it were, with charcoal sketches, which you can then explore in detail in the literature of spiritual science.

[ 22 ] If we wish to examine this memory more closely, we find that in the earliest period of a person’s life after birth, once they have entered the world, this memory is not yet active. This memory first emerges in early childhood; later on, we recall events up to a certain point in early childhood. What came before must be recounted to us by those around us, but we do not remember it ourselves. On what, then, does our ability to recall the past depend? It depends on certain powers that the soul can employ to retain images—powers that enable the soul to store these images within itself. These forces were already present before memory existed; they were already present immediately after birth, but they had a different task at that time. Their task was to continue working on the delicate organs of the human being—on the nervous system and the brain—and to shape them plastically. They were still formative forces of the human organism, of that which is, as it were, still soft—to put it crudely, but it describes a reality—which must first be shaped in such a way that the human being becomes this particular human being. These formative forces continue to flow into the physical organization during the tender years of childhood.

[ 23 ] And when this organization has hardened—again, figuratively speaking—to the point where these formative forces can no longer flow into the physical body, then the physical body acts in such a way that these formative forces do not flow into it but are reflected back from the physical body into the soul. The physical body acts like a mirror. And what we then experience in our soul—especially what is stored in our memories—are mirror images reflected back from our physical life. In truth, we remember because our body is a mirroring apparatus. Natural science will come to fully understand this as it continues along the paths on which all this is already hinted at. Then it will also see through the contradictions it raises when such things are brought up. It is as if one mirror after another were hanging on the wall, and as we walked past, we would see ourselves only when we stood directly in front of the mirrors. The mirror reflects our own image back to us. So it is with our inner, soul-level experience. The body is a mirroring apparatus; it reflects back what the soul experiences. Through this, the soul itself experiences what were once formative forces in the earliest childhood—forces that were, as it were, used to construct the mirror in the first place.

[ 24 ] The next step is this: Imagine the following—I’m presenting it as a comparison, but it represents something very real—imagine that you are standing in front of a mirror, which allows you to see yourself, to see what you yourself send to the mirror as a beam of light. You see yourself because the mirror reflects your physical image. In the same way, your body reflects what is in the soul. But now imagine that you were to acquire—this takes place in the soul—the power to do without the mirror; you would develop such strong powers that you would, as it were, project into space what the mirror otherwise reflects as your own image. But this is achieved through the soul exercises I mentioned: concentration of thought, immersion in the will, and—one might also say—surrender to the order of the worlds.

[ 25 ] This strengthens the soul’s powers to such an extent that what is otherwise reflected back by the body—which is merely a mirror image—emerges as the soul’s own inner experience, coming to life within the soul through its own power. Therefore, what the spiritual researcher experiences inwardly when he has separated his soul from the body is a more highly developed, active process of recollection. While in ordinary life we manage only to reach the stage of memory—in which we are dependent on the body’s reflection—through the exercises described here we now acquire the ability to develop inner soul forces, to make our inner soul life actively operative, so that it radiates an inner reality, as it were, from within itself.

[ 26 ] When the soul reaches the point where it, as it were, creates its inner powers—though in truth it draws them forth from its deepest core—it will realize that it is not only unfolding these powers, but that along with the unfolding of these powers, along with the creation, as it were, of the inner reflection, something else takes place—something we might call: perception—the immediate grasping of a spiritual world. However, this perception is entirely different from the perception of external, sensory reality. When we perceive external, sensory reality, we look at objects with our eyes, listen to sounds with our ears, and touch external objects with our hands. There is the object we approach, which acts upon us from the outside; but when that comes to life—when we develop what I have described as the inner forces of the soul, what truly comes to life so that the soul knows itself to be outside the body within a system of inner forces—then what is spiritual essence, spiritual reality, flows into these forces.

[ 27 ] Let me use another analogy: When I touch this corner here with my hand, through sensory perception, the corner is outside of me; the corner touches my hand from the outside. It is not like that in spiritual perception; rather, if this were a power of the soul—which the hand now represents—and if I did not allow it to act, then the spiritual would, as it were, flow into the hand from behind. While the physical touches things from the outside, the spiritual does not touch from the outside; rather, the spiritual flows into the powers of the soul, so that we must adopt entirely new concepts if we wish to speak of this spiritual cognition and perception. We perceive external things; in order to enter into a relationship with the spiritual, it is necessary that we develop powers into which this spiritual world flows. That is to say, we must say: We experience the great and mighty through the development of the soul—that the spiritual world perceives us, that we become something like a thought, like a volitional impulse of higher spiritual beings who stand above us, invisible and supersensible. Of these spiritual beings—who are invisible and supersensible in relation to the soul’s powers of cognition just discussed—the spiritual researcher must speak in the same way that the natural scientist speaks of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and the physical human kingdom, as the four kingdoms of nature that exist outside of us. And just as we, when we encounter the beings of these four kingdoms, say: We perceive these beings, we form concepts of them; they are outside of us, and we create sensory images of them—so we must say: As we step out of our bodies with our soul, we ourselves—but in a much higher, inner vitality and essential nature—become the thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will of the higher spiritual beings; we are perceived; we experience ourselves being perceived by the higher spiritual beings.

[ 28 ] From this, esteemed audience, you can see that anyone who approaches the question, “What is immortal in the human being?” cannot approach it in the way that people still so often do today. They approach such a question and say: Well, I have adopted this or that concept. How can anyone prove to me the immortality of the soul?

[ 29 ] Yes, one cannot prove this using the concepts one has acquired in external life and in what is today called “science”; for these concepts refer to what the soul experiences in everyday life, which is merely an inner reflection. Just as the reflection does not remain when the mirror is no longer there, so too does what the soul thinks, feels, and wills in everyday life not remain, because it is merely a reflection of the body; even the memory in which this is stored is a reflection of the soul. Anyone who seeks to prove the immortality of the soul through thinking, feeling, and willing is on the same path as one who seeks to prove the permanence of the reflection from the image in the mirror. The natural scientist must be granted everything that constitutes the reflection, and nothing else is available to him. Everything that is commonly called the “soul” in everyday life does not pass through the gate of death, but there is something contained within it—there is something contained within the soul—for what spiritual science brings to light is contained within the soul—that passes through the gate of death, and does so in such a way that it can be grasped only in concepts and ideas that one does not possess at all unless one first develops them.

[ 30 ] While in ordinary experience one must say that the human soul perceives, in spiritual experience one must say: The soul is perceived by higher beings. While in sensory experience one perceives oneself, in spiritual experience one must say: After death, the human being is received by the higher spiritual beings. When a human being incorporates thoughts of external natural objects into his soul, the being that reigns supersensibly over him incorporates himself into the human being; he is thought of, he is carried away into the spiritual world. This is why it is so difficult to answer the question, “What is immortal in the human being?” if one tries to answer it using the ordinary, everyday concepts that do not apply to it at all.

[ 31 ] And all philosophers who have attempted to approach the immortality of the human soul—to answer the question of the soul’s immortality—have time and again come to the conclusion that there must be some subtle, substantial entity that transcends death. We have seen, distinguished audience, that nothing of the substantial remains at all, but that the soul’s powers are themselves a higher form of memory, that they consist of being perceived and finding a sense of security in the spiritual world. You all know that such processes even have their symbols and analogies in sensory life. When one billiard ball is struck against another, the physicist says: The state of motion of the first ball is transferred to the second. What has been transferred from one ball to the other? It is not the substance of the first ball that has been transferred to the second, but only the force.

[ 32 ] Those who have reflected on the immortality of the soul have always thought of it as something that exists in ordinary life and passes through the gate of death; whereas what passes through the gate of death is precisely what one must first seek, for it lies so deeply hidden within the soul that it goes entirely unnoticed—attention in ordinary life is not directed toward it; yet it is indeed there. And when the person who so truly—as it were, chemically—separates the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical body, when he then experiences this spiritual-soul aspect as it is sheltered in a supersensible world of spiritual beings that stands above him, then he also knows that in this aspect of the soul, which is hidden in ordinary life — just as hydrogen is hidden in water — that he possesses something that works entirely in secret, so to speak, between the lines of life; something that takes in the finest forces of the soul, of experience, and of a person’s moral capacities, just as the tiny plant seed takes in the forces from the entire plant in order to concentrate them. And after withering—after the leaves wither and the flower dies—the plant, as a small seed, carries over what lived in the previous plant; it carries over into the next plant what the plant has preserved as a seed—so it is in the human soul. If one distills it out in this way, one realizes: In every moment of life, whether awake or asleep, this human soul works ceaselessly in the depths of everyday life, working out all the abilities we acquire; it is permeated, deeply permeated by what it has done—right and wrong, beautiful and ugly; it carries this within itself, just as a plant seed carries within itself the seed of the entire new plant.

[ 33 ] And then one knows that what lives so hidden within the soul undergoes a life between death and new birth and returns once more to earthly life. In this life between death and new birth, the human being gathers from the spiritual world those forces that become formative forces, so that through a new birth he can unite with what is given to him by his father and mother, by the line of ancestors, [in order]—once it has solidified to the point where it can reflect—to give him a new inner soul life. Thus, the human soul does not experience a single earthly life, but rather successive earthly lives.

[ 34 ] Thus, the complete earthly life consists of a succession of lives that unfold between birth and death, and of the life between death and a new birth, which is longer than the earthly lives—a time when the soul dwells in purely spiritual spheres, where it is active and engaged, and where it has become just as intertwined with the spiritual world as it is here with the physical world. The fact that the human soul, in its universal nature, experiences repeated earthly lives, and that each subsequent earthly life is the result of earlier ones—this is what spiritual science will gradually incorporate into humanity’s spiritual culture, just as the Copernican worldview has been incorporated into external culture. Certainly, it is still very much the case today that people often say: “Yes, but what you’re telling me contradicts what my five senses hold to be true!” Well, people have even had to experience something entirely different that contradicts their five senses. For millennia, people believed—based on their five senses—that the sun and the starry sky revolved around the Earth. That the opposite is true—that the Earth moves around the Sun—is what they had to believe despite the contradiction with their five senses. Thus, what must now contradict the five senses—namely, that human beings go through repeated earthly lives—will likewise become part of people’s habits of thought. But then human beings will speak, based on true science, of what is immortal in the human being. They will seek this immortality, so to speak, between the lines of ordinary experiences; they will know within themselves an inner, active being that is sheltered in a spiritual world, just as the sensory outer world is sheltered in our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Then human beings will know themselves to be connected to their eternal, their immortal self, and to the spiritual world. Such things lie ahead for the development of humanity. And we may truly remember this in our own time—a time of difficult yet glorious trials—we may remember how German spiritual life in particular—you will not find it incongruous if I mention this in the final part of my remarks—how German spiritual life in particular has long been striving to attain such a science.

[ 35 ] We need only recall Lessing, the great standard-bearer of modern German intellectual life, and all the thoughts he gathered in his soul—thoughts that enlightened both him and humanity. He summarized them, as if in a testament to his life, in his exquisite work *The Education of the Human Race*. Of course, many people today—especially the very intelligent ones—say: “Well, Lessing!” He wrote and said so much throughout his life; then he grew old, his mental powers waned, and he ended up writing such convoluted stuff, in which he even grappled with concepts like the doctrine of repeated earthly lives and the intermediate states between death and a new birth in the spiritual world! People consider it a quirky idea, and they forgive great minds when they too occasionally arrive at such convoluted ideas—ideas that, in ordinary life, are not regarded as such and cannot be grasped by the five senses. But Lessing made a very significant statement at the end of the work: There have, after all, always been people in the most ancient times who, through ancient clairvoyance—through ancient abilities of the human soul that, by certain powers, were even closer to the spiritual forces of the world—knew something in primeval times about repeated earthly lives. And Lessing says: “Should that which the human soul attained through its original powers—what it accomplished before it was corrupted by the sophistry of the school—should that, precisely that, be untrue?”

[ 36 ] Lessing was right. The humanities will show humanity that what existed, so to speak, at a primitive stage of development will emerge at the highest level of truly mature scientific knowledge—provided, of course, that science has advanced to the point where it does not limit itself to outwardly tangible methods that can be grasped by the five senses; but when it accepts as such methods experiments of the mind and soul—which has just been described as a kind of spiritual chemistry. And it is precisely German spiritual life that has always pointed to this intimacy of the soul’s life, through which the soul transcends itself into a higher life of feeling that is not merely a life of memory, but an immersion into spiritual reality. A higher life of thought, a higher life of feeling, a higher life of will. That the soul may thus strengthen its powers and thereby emerge from its body—this is what German spiritual life has always striven to achieve; and this belongs to the seeds of German spiritual life to which I referred yesterday, which have yet to blossom and bear fruit as the flowers and fruits of this German spiritual life.

[ 37 ] We see, after all, how remarkably introspective German minds—such as the truly wonderful Novalis, for example—how these German minds, time and again through inner, living contemplation, through the contemplative experience of their soul life, grasp this soul life and perceive it in such a direct way that they know: This passes through the gate of death as the immortality of the soul; and how they then arrive at concepts that are foolish to ordinary experience, but which, precisely because they do not fit ordinary experience, are well-suited to an experience that transcends ordinary experience. Anyone who seeks only ordinary concepts in spiritual science cannot attain this. This spiritual science requires an inner flexibility, an elasticity of the mind, so that one can arrive at new concepts. Most people would like to spare themselves this out of inner complacency. They believe the spiritual world must be something like a finer copy of the sensory world; they, in turn, imagine the spiritual world as material, as substantial. But when one experiences the world spiritually, nothing of the familiar remains in it; instead, something entirely new awakens—something one has not yet known—but with which one must enrich one’s soul in order to experience within oneself what is immortal in the human soul.

[ 38 ] So when such people speak of the spiritual world—to which the soul belongs in its immortal state—they must first formulate the words and concepts. That is also why I must, so to speak, ask for your forgiveness regarding today’s lecture. In a lecture like this, where one speaks of the spiritual world using words shaped by ordinary life, one must wrestle with the words. One must accept that when formulating words that go beyond the ordinary, one resorts to words that are uncomfortable for those who wish to cling to the ordinary. Time and again, one finds that critics come along who say: “What you’ve said doesn’t even exist.” I know that. I know—well, certainly, these gentlemen know a great deal, an infinite amount—but when they apply their old concepts to what must be described in entirely new terms, then their criticism cannot fit what they are trying to characterize. But we have, in German intellectual life, minds — Novalis is one of them — who know how to speak in a language that, while it is the German language, is nonetheless like a wonderfully vivid essence distilled from the German language to reveal something as real as the sensory world—the reality into which the soul enters when it passes through the gate of death. What such people say can indeed have an effect on those who are receptive to it.

[ 39 ] And now I would like to give you a remarkable example; it is too wonderful for me to withhold from you—it shows the influence Novalis had. I am deliberately seeking to illustrate his influence on a Belgian-French poet-philosopher—a Belgian-French poet-philosopher who studied Novalis, who, as he claims, immersed himself completely in Novalis with his soul, and who formed an impression that he describes as follows.

[ 40 ] I must say, before I bring this up, that perhaps another—as you will hear in a moment—another Belgian-French poet-philosopher, Maurice Maeterlinck, immediately after the outbreak of the war and time and again thereafter, found particularly scathing words to describe the German “barbarians” and lashed out against this “barbaric culture” in an outrageous manner. This is Maurice Maeterlinck, though German intellectual life did more than French intellectual life to make him known to the world. Well, but gratitude need not be demanded in this day and age. He really did revile and denounce these German “barbarians” quite severely, following the pattern of the others I mentioned yesterday.

[ 41 ] In contrast, there is another Belgian-French poet-philosopher who has allowed Novalis—one of the most “German” of the German poet-philosophers—to influence him with everything he has to say about what is immortal in human nature, and he then describes the effect this has had on him. He cannot help but say: When one reads Sophocles or Shakespeare, when one sees what Sophocles’ characters, what Shakespeare’s characters, and even what Hamlet experience, what these characters do and suffer is entirely earthly; it is of interest only to earthly human beings. But, according to the Belgian-French poet-philosopher, if a spirit from another planet or an English being—forgive the expression; I mean a being that is an angel, as the Belgian-French poet puts it—one cannot rely on Goethe’s words in *Faust*, which are somewhat ambiguous: “They lisp in English when they lie”—that is inserted in parentheses—this Belgian-French poet-philosopher says: If a spirit were to descend from other worlds, it could not be interested in what the characters of Sophocles and Shakespeare experience; after all, those are merely earthly matters.

[ 42 ] But in Novalis, this Belgian-French poet-philosopher finds a soul that has something to experience, something to say—something that would even interest spirits who might one day descend from the cosmos to pay a visit to Earth; because Novalis speaks of the eternal nature of the human soul, which must interest not only human souls insofar as they live within the body, but must also interest that which belongs to the entire extraterrestrial world. And in beautiful words, this Belgian-French poet-philosopher speaks of what he experienced in Novalis, the German poet-philosopher:

But if he needed further proof, she would count him among those whose works border on silence.

[ 43 ] He believes that everyday language is meant for what is fleeting in time, but when it comes to what is immortal, one might say that one must actually remain silent about it or find a different language.

She would open the gates of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without concerning themselves with the subtle gestures of her body. Together they would ascend to the lonely highlands, where consciousness rises [to a higher level] and where all those [filled] with restlessness about themselves attentively survey the immense ring that links the world of phenomena with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the very limits of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts lie only in the unseen, where he must be constantly on guard. Only at these heights are there thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble it and are as commanding as the soul itself. There, humanity reigned for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that herald the Earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly bears the color of our soul. We sense that the passions of the mind and the body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of an alien reason; but the people of whom I speak have, in their works, emerged from the small village of passions and have spoken words that are of value even to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

[ 44 ] Such are the words of the Belgian-French poet-philosopher. Wouldn’t he, if he were to hear Maurice Maeterlinck now railing against the “barbarians”—[what has emerged from “barbarism”]—about which the Belgian-French poet-philosopher speaks as I have read to you—wouldn’t he say to a Maurice Maeterlinck:

In truth, it is difficult to listen to one’s soul and hear its faint, childlike voice amid the useless clamor that surrounds it.

[ 45 ] No doubt the Belgian-French poet-philosopher, from whom I read to you—Maurice Maeterlinck—would call such a person a useless loudmouth with his “barbaric drivel.” Yes, but there’s a catch, because what I said earlier was actually quite justified—those words were written by Maurice Maeterlinck himself—though they were written before the outbreak of the war!

[ 46 ] These are the kinds of things we experience today; that is why I said yesterday: What we are experiencing in the world today is like a characteristic chapter in psychiatry. For what follows from the incredibly paradoxical fact that the very same Maurice Maeterlinck could utter these words about the German Novalis—and then go on to revile and denounce the entire German people as a “barbarian people”? What follows from the fact that what he said years ago—and what I have read to you—is, deep down, untrue and hypocritical? That is, in fact, the peculiarity of our present-day culture, ladies and gentlemen, that—because this culture, so to speak, is brimming with what has already been stored up through language and outward appearances—even a false soul can produce very beautiful words, words that sound lovely, words that may, however, be inwardly hypocritical. But it is precisely one of the paths of the soul that lead to the spirit in the way I have described—that everything the soul brings forth and experiences is, in its deepest core, true, shockingly true.

[ 47 ] If there is even a hint of empty rhetoric or insincerity within the soul on the path into the spiritual world, one cannot find this path into the spiritual world. Following the One who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”—that is, the union of the three—such a path of imitating the One who said this is the path of truth. And if it is merely a phrase—no matter how beautiful it may sound—one will not find the truth; he finds only the great deception, which can also penetrate deep into the soul, precisely where the soul seeks that with which it is connected as its immortal part. Inner truth alone brings the soul into connection with that which, as the Divine, interweaves and permeates the world.

[ 48 ] And when, again, drawing from German intellectual life, the wonderful and profound Master Eckhart, the philosopher, speaks from German intellectual life, saying that within the mind there is a spark in which that which can live from the Divine in the individual human soul is kindled, then one must say that the human soul can experience what is to be kindled like a spark in the mind only in authenticity if it is profoundly true within itself.

[ 49 ] This does, however, require self-knowledge. But this self-knowledge is difficult to attain in life. What we achieve—as I have explained—is that when a person steps out of the physical realm with their soul and spirit, they then have their ordinary earthly self before them, just as they otherwise have external things before them. But they must be able to see their earthly self and, before embarking on this spiritual path, must be able to cultivate self-knowledge as an inner habit.

[ 50 ] But to illustrate just how difficult this is, here is a comparative example, so to speak: A rather famous contemporary professor, the Viennese philosopher—who used to be in Prague—Dr. Ernst Mach, who has written various books that are highly regarded today, provided a small example on the third page of his book *Analysis of Sensations* of how difficult it is—even in terms of one’s physical form—to attain self-knowledge. He recounts: “As a young man, I once saw—while walking down the street—a face in profile in a store window where two mirrors faced each other. I thought: What kind of person is this before me, with such a repulsive, indeed repugnant face; and I was quite surprised when I discovered that I was looking at my own reflection, which was revealed to me by the way the mirrors were arranged.” And as a second example, the same professor recounts immediately below that on page three of his book: “Once, when I arrived quite exhausted from a journey, I boarded a bus. There I saw a man getting on from the other side as well, and I thought,” he says—he admits it, he is completely sincere—“what a shabby, unsympathetic schoolmaster is getting on there. And once again I saw: it was myself.” And he adds: “So I was more familiar with the typical appearance of the species than with my own.”

[ 51 ] A woman who heard this after I had mentioned it in other lectures recounts an example of such a lack of self-awareness regarding one’s appearance, which she observed in a relative. She went into a restaurant in a city she wasn’t familiar with. She wasn’t quite sure of her way around. As she walked toward the wall, she saw a woman coming toward her from the other side. “Well, what kind of ugly country bumpkin is that?” she thought. She was a very elegant city woman. It wasn’t until she spoke to the woman—and the woman didn’t answer—that she recognized herself.

[ 52 ] These are examples that, I would say, are taken from the coarsest external-sensory realm. But if human beings have so little insight into their outer, physical, and sensory nature, they have even less insight into the soul in everyday life. Yet this ability to look at oneself, to recognize oneself as an external object, is part of truly grasping what is immortal in the human being.

[ 53 ] And the person who truly immerses themselves in the spiritual world and who can then perceive what is real in this spiritual world—who can perceive, I say this without prejudice, the human being not only in their life between birth and death but beyond death—knows that when they commune with the soul, the soul looks back on death, precisely by looking back—in self-knowledge—at itself, at what has been experienced between birth and death. Self-knowledge is, as it were, the eye of the immortal spirit. Through self-knowledge, we must perceive the entire spiritual world during the time we experience spiritually between death and a new birth. All of this is truly so that we can say: German spiritual life contains the seeds that must come to further unfolding and development, that must be grasped vividly in the course of time. Then, from this German spiritual life, true knowledge and true spiritual insight will emerge in the future.

[ 54 ] If one considers the intellectual and cultural history of modern times even briefly, one is led to conclude that the German spirit, by virtue of its fundamental strength, is called upon to develop the idealism it has cultivated through its great philosophers into spiritualism—into the recognition of the spirit, the experience of the spirit, and scientific knowledge. One is tempted to say that the German spirit was constrained, suppressed, and stifled by a foreign spirit. We see how Goethe, who is deeply rooted in the German spirit, sighs under the weight of what was coming over from France during his time.

[ 55 ] While the German mind is actually inclined to recognize, in its cognition, more and more intimately the Spirit that pervades and permeates the world, the French mind is more inclined to grasp and rationalize everything that can be grasped by the intellect. This is evident even in the distinctive character of French poetry. But the intellect, which is bound to the brain, is, fundamentally speaking, capable only of developing materialism. Therefore, materialism is, at its core, a genuine French product, and it was only through the influence of French intellectual life on German intellectual life that what must emerge from the living driving forces inherent in the German character—and alive in the German spirit—was overwhelmed. Materialism is not inherent in the German character when it grasps itself in its deepest, most intimate core. This inner “Frenchness,” this inner materialism, must also be overcome—overcome by the German spirit in the course of time.

[ 56 ] And if we trace a characteristic feature of the development of worldviews in the British Isles—particularly in what has emerged from there as the dominant philosophy—we can summarize it by saying: The British philosopher—and this can be demonstrated in detail everywhere—ultimately arrives at the same conclusion as Locke, Hobbes, and so on: to accept only what the senses perceive and what is deduced from that, and to make the intellect merely a servant of sensory perception. This leads to external empiricism or skepticism, to a tendency toward doubt. But this has also deeply influenced the German spirit, and it is something from which it must free itself. After all, we are currently experiencing quite a few things beneath the surface of the soul’s consciousness in our time.

[ 57 ] While England, with its worldview, was called upon to swear by mere sensory appearance, France was destined to cultivate humanity—based on rationalism and reason—to the point of the proposition “Man as a machine,” the German spirit—having emancipated itself from France—cultivated idealism, which is the precursor to spiritualism, the true science of the spirit. Idealism does not seek to remain at the level of materialism, which is bound only to reason; it does not seek to remain at the level of the empiricism of the English, who wish to rely solely on the senses, nor at the level of the rationalism of the French, but rather it seeks to grasp that which lives vividly within the soul. I demonstrated this yesterday using the figure of Fichte. But as this is liberated from foreign influences, as the German comes to fulfill himself spiritually, the living spiritual knowledge of the culture of the future will be incorporated into German idealism.

[ 58 ] If one still endeavors today to do something to promote this living spiritual insight, one does, however, encounter quite fierce resistance for the time being. If I may mention something personal here: Since the 1880s, I have been striving to assert the essence of Goethe’s Theory of Colors—the depth of this theory—against materialistic English Newtonian physics, in which a spiritual understanding of even the physical realm is truly present. It is easy to understand—one can list all the objections that physics has against Goethe’s theory of colors—it is understandable that it opposes it. But Goethe’s theory of colors, even as a scientific product, is a living penetration into the physical reality of colors; and as spiritual insight takes hold of human culture, it will be recognized how infinitely superior this theory of colors is to the English one. Today, however, people still turn a deaf ear; the relevant writings are not yet being read—or are read only by a small circle. But that is always the way it is.

[ 59 ] Goethe established a natural worldview—rooted in what German idealism regarded as the precursor to true spiritual science—concerning the development of living beings. I, too, have been writing about this since the 1880s to show how this Goethean theory of development is a spiritual perspective. It is on this basis that Goethe was able to fulfill what he emphasized to Schiller: that he already sees the idea in reality. But even here, people still turn a deaf ear; for the other approach is more convenient. This Goethean doctrine was too uncomfortable for humanity to accept. And when Darwin came along and presented all of this in a way that made sense—through external, sensory observation—in a more comfortable manner, in a way that so appealed to the English spirit, then it was accepted; then it swept the world; and people passed by the difficult, uncomfortable, yet spiritually sound Goethean theory. When Darwin presented the theory of evolution in a way that was easy to grasp, it was accepted.

[ 60 ] And the great philosopher Hegel, who also had quite a connection to this city, provided another example. He demonstrated how Johannes Kepler—the German astronomical philosopher, or philosophical astronomer, to whom science owes so immensely much—achieved great things in terms of understanding the interconnectedness of the world. Yes, indeed, Kepler’s life was such that Kästner’s famous epigram applies to him; because he understood the movements of the stars—because he saw through it all and expressed it in marvelous formulas—he was forced to lead a life of which the epigrammatist [Kästner] says:

No mortal
had ever climbed so high,
until Kepler climbed—and died of starvation.
He knew only how to [entertain] the spirits,
so the bodies left him without bread.

[ 61 ] But Hegel goes on to show that the famous Newtonian theory of gravity—which every physicist says forms the foundation of modern physics—is nothing more than the achievements of the Swabian Kepler expressed in mathematical formulas. The reality lies with Kepler. One is faced with a historical falsehood when one speaks of the validity of Newtonianism.

[ 62 ] The German spirit will have to stand on its own. This will stand out from the many sad, but also glorious, events of our time as a hallmark of humanity’s historical development. However, the forces coming from the west and northwest have worked thoroughly to influence human souls in such a way that the path I have described—the path into the spiritual world—is made more difficult for them.

[ 63 ] I am now going to say something—please forgive me—that many will find quite silly; but I know it is the truth. Perhaps the time will come when this truth can be demonstrated in detail. All that is needed is time. I can only put it this way: From childhood onward, the path has been thoroughly obstructed for souls—things have already improved, but they must continue to get better and better—the path has been thoroughly obstructed for souls, the possibility of freely unfolding the powers that have been hinted at, in order to make their way into the spiritual world. As a result, the path has been obstructed—I truly do not say this out of mere national chauvinism; I say this based on psychological and cultural-historical insight—the path has been obstructed because the poison of Defoe’s *Robinson Crusoe* still plagues and poisons the lives of numerous boys and girls; and therein lies what nestles itself in the soul to permeate it with the empiricism of English culture.

[ 64 ] Many, many inner victories—victories that are in keeping with German culture—are yet to be won. But what is happening now is the great, bloody, yet glorious harbinger. And those who, as heroic souls, are now passing through the gates of death—the spiritual scientist, in particular, must point this out, since he knows how souls, as realities, pass through death, and since he knows how those who are dead continue to live in a different form—they will be among us in a higher sense with their untapped powers. For in their soul-spiritual being there is something that, for decades to come—for these are young, flourishing human lives leaving the earth in our time—there is still much within them that could have supplied the body with formative forces for a whole long life, for decades to come. But this will continue to weave and live on, apart from the immortal part of their soul; it will be present in the spiritual sphere; it will be there to help, provided humanity meets it with understanding in the creation of a worldview that is truly spiritual in nature—a worldview that is spiritual through and through, and that is scientific in the fullest and strictest sense of the word. Spiritual science will thus be able to become something truly vibrant and real. For the spiritual scientist knows that when what he has to offer as the result of his research comes alive in people’s souls, these souls will then become so attuned to earthly life that the great chasm—which today yawns between the physical and the supersensory as a materialistic worldview—will be bridged.

[ 65 ] In a much more real sense than we can imagine today, people will come to live within a worldview that will reveal to them not only their fellow human beings who are currently living on Earth, but also those who have passed through the gate of death and continue to exert their influence. But this is a worldview to which the great number of deaths that our fateful age has brought upon us simultaneously serves as a solemn reminder. Much blood, much death, much hardship, much suffering and pain, much courage, much willingness to sacrifice, and immense greatness surge and weave through that which surrounds us in our fateful, fate-laden, and historically significant present. But it is precisely in this present moment that we must point to that which, beyond all death and all merely temporal life, points to the hidden, to that which is immortal in the human being.

[ 66 ] Not everyone will be able to become a spiritual researcher, just as not everyone can become a chemist. But a time will come when, just as the contributions of a few chemists are made available to all of humanity, so too will the contributions of individual spiritual researchers benefit all of humanity and its communal life. One need not be a spiritual researcher oneself to recognize the truth of the findings of spiritual researchers; one need only be free from the prejudices that today’s habitual ways of thinking place in one’s path, and the things that have been hinted at today—spiritual science—can be understood. To discover the facts for oneself—indeed, to say even a single sentence about what has been the main focus of today’s discussion—one must walk the path of spiritual research oneself. To penetrate the spiritual world, where beings dwell—divine spiritual beings who are just as real as the things and beings of the physical world—to speak appropriately about these worlds, and to truly bring a message from this world and these beings, one must walk the path of spiritual research oneself.

[ 67 ] To understand what is brought forth from the spiritual worlds, one really needs only to approach the matter with an unbiased sense of truth. People who today do not believe they can reconcile this sense with what spiritual research says simply fail to realize that it is not their sense of truth, but rather their habits of thought—arising from prejudice—that stand in the way. But once these habits of thought have been swept aside—just as the old habits of thought were swept aside in the face of the Copernican worldview—then spiritual science will contribute, with regard to the spiritual and soul aspects of human experience, something that will be infinitely more fruitful than what natural science has contributed to external life. For what natural science offers relates to what surrounds us, to what we build, to what we construct, to many things through which we make our lives comfortable and pleasant—things that are useful to us. But what spiritual science has to offer is something every soul desires, provided it becomes aware of the forces of this desire within the spiritual and soul life; that which gives human beings the opportunity to develop in such a way that desolation, loneliness, and disharmony in life cannot take root in their souls, but rather what the soul gains in strength, so that the soul can stand firm in the face of life, whatever the increasing complexities of the future may demand of that soul.

[ 68 ] Spiritual science will incorporate into spiritual development something that will awaken in the soul a living awareness of what is immortal in the human being. And in this coexistence with the immortal part of the soul, human beings will truly know—they will know that the world is more comprehensive than what the senses perceive, than what is experienced in time. This knowledge—which will not remain abstract or theoretical—will coalesce into certain feelings that will bring inner joy and sustain the soul, while also making it industrious, powerful, and capable.

[ 69 ] I would like to summarize in a few words, at the end, what spiritual science can awaken in the soul through such feelings—words that may serve as a conclusion to what I have been able to say today about this question, as I mentioned, only in brief strokes, as in a charcoal drawing: “What is immortal in the human being?” This may find its conclusion in the words that are, in a sense, the lingering impression of spiritual scientific insight and spiritual scientific conviction regarding the question under consideration today:

They speak to the human senses
The things in the vastness of space;
They change as time goes by.
Awakening itself
The human soul awakens
Unbounded by the vastness of space
And undeterred by the passage of time
In the stream of becoming that is eternity!